This is Goodbye

Category A: First Place (2023) Monash Short Story Writing Competition
Author: Lily Holcombe

As shadows slowly began to bleed into the ever-growing darkness, the golden rays of scattered light that once littered the sky began to peel away. The endless star-pricked void hidden beneath was revealed, a blanket on which the moon would lie. Trees that once would have felt the gentle brush of wind through their leaves now reduced to skeletal corpses, masts stripped of their flags. Once sultry air was reduced to a lifeless breeze, sweeping up fragments of the fallen land. The collapsed world resembled more of a fever dream than reality; a hellish dystopian earth that would never come to light.

A silhouette pulled itself from the shadows, dragging itself over the remnants of its own kin. It kept pushing forward, through the waves of rotting flesh and bone. It was unrecognisable; a creature who had warped with the land, A ghost of what it once was. An empty shell that had been abandoned long ago.

Yet it pushed on.

It didn’t walk; instead, it threw out its limbs, clinging onto the bodies of its fallen family. Every movement seemed to induce pain, crawling over its own, forced to leave itself void of all emotion.

Amongst the abandoned skeletons laid ruins of a forgotten time. Stubs of stone pillars protruded from the rattled earth, melting into the shadows. Shattered bricks caked in concrete served as a bed for the fallen, supporting their fractured bones and skulls. These were the scars that plagued the world; a reminder of what once was. The marks left by years of neglect and denial never faded, serving as a painful reminder of the past. Any who had seen the fate that lay ahead were considered liars. Those who refused to acknowledge the truth perished.

And those who knew were helpless to stop it.

As the creature pulled itself into the dwindling beams of light, its features came into focus. What once might have been a tail was now nothing but a thin, mangled stick that dragged along the ground, leaving a trailing red snake in its wake. Its fur weaved itself into unbreakable knots, shrouding its skin. From behind the veil of mangled hair, twin moons gazed out into the world, lost in memory. Memory of a time when the earth was still whole, when the two-legged animals were still around. They had built a world that was filled with promises.

Yet none of them rang true.

Now battling for breath, its movements began to slow, limbs crippling beneath its body. Rearing its head back, with a last burst of strength, it howled. The only sound that could be heard for miles, piercing the veil of silence that now shrouded the once bustling hub of life. It was crying out to its family, begging to join them once more. As it let its breath seep away, it began to sink to the ground. The howling stopped. The ragged breath ceased.

That was the last sound on earth.

The cry that would never reach ears.